College Football Road Trip Extravaganza Round Three: Happy Valley

Loyal readers, welcome back for the third and final installment of my 2009 College Football Road Trip Extravaganza. It's been a tiresome, arduous, but ultimately memorable three-week stretch, and I sure hope you have vicariously enjoyed the ride. I have driven through six states (CT, MA, NY, PA, OH, MI) and set foot in two others (IL, NC). I have logged just under two thousand five hundred miles onto my car's odometer, and put several, uh, "miles" on my liver as well. I have reveled in the passion and pageantry of college football with over two hundred and fifty thousand other spectators (on aggregate), and I have single-handedly injected enough money into the American economy via gas purchases to end the current financial crisis. And why did I do it? In a desperate attempt to make up for time and experiences lost by not attending an institution with big time college football -- what I was thinking, I will never know -- I have taken it upon myself to be a part of a world that passed me by. Ergo, I have delved deep into the heart of Big Ten country for the last fortnight and a half and sought to do as the locals do. It has been an experience that has further fueled my fiery fixation with the world of college football -- and all sports for that matter -- by reinforcing what I already knew and loved, but not without throwing me a few curveballs along the way.